Apple welcomes indie advertising companies, shuts out AdMob

Apple has drawn a line in the developer sandbox that some larger advertising …

Apple has drawn a line in the developer sandbox that some larger advertising companies, like Google's AdMob, may not be too happy with. In a revision of the iOS developer terms, Apple has stated that application creators may pass on certain non-device data with Apple's explicit permission, but only to independent advertising companies not owned by or affiliated with mobile platform developers and distributors (read: Google, with its Android platform).

At the recent D8 conference, Apple CEO Steve Jobs was loath to discuss the issue of collecting data, even though Apple had just laid down a change in SDK terms of service that prevented the collection and sending of analytics data on the iPhone. Jobs said the change was not intended to ban rivals of the company's new iAd platform, but to hobble third-party analytics companies like Flurry, who had pinged devices on Apple's campus for data that nearly allowed them to discover 50 tablets in use.

In the version of the developer terms revised this week, section 3.3.9 reads that application creators may send on certain kinds of data, like a device's UDID or user location, to third-party companies, so long at Apple has given written approval of the receiving company. But the terms go on to state that the advertising companies getting the data must not be owned or affiliated with developers or distributors of mobile devices, mobile operating systems, or "development environments other than Apple."

The change is likely targeting one of iAd's largest potential rivals: Google's AdMob. Google recently released an SDK for making ads on the iPad that they thought would fly as long as they didn't collect device info, but it now appears that the SDK is destined to rot at the bottom of any hopeful developers' environments.